The invention concerns connectors for connecting, possibly with prior stripping of an insulating sheath, electrical conductors of relatively small cross-section, of the type having a flat conducting element in which there is provided at least one gripping slot or relatively small width in relation to the thickness of the flat element. This slot is adapted to receive at least one conductor.
In known connectors of this type several operations are necessary to obtain a gripping slot of the desired with. French Pat. No. 2,072,627, for example, describes a method of providing such a relatively narrow slot in which, firstly, a part of the flat element is stamped and folded out to leave an opening with two facing walls; in a second step, a first of these walls is cut away to provide a first wall of the gripping slot, then in a third step the folded part is brought back to its initial position in the plane of the flat element to form the second wall of the gripping slot. Each of the walls of the gripping slot is thus provided by a distinct operation with a distinct tool. It follows that the width of the slot may, as a result of the manufacturing tolerances involved in operation of the tools, vary for example by plus or minus three or four hundredths of a millimeter. Such variations would be inacceptable when the slot has a width of the order of 0.2 millimeter, since they correspond to plus or minus 15 or 20 % of the width. As a result, with slots provided in this way, there may be important variations in the gripping of a gripped conductor.
French Pat. No. 2,058,993 also describes a connector of this type formed of two superposed flat plates, one wall of each gripping slot being formed by one plate and the other wall by the other plate. This device also involves the previously mentioned drawback, namely relatively great possible variations of the width of the slot due to machining tolerances.